Parent involvement is essential to student success. However, it is also often a struggle for even the most experienced teacher to get parents involved. There are many barriers to parent involvement including issues related to parents finding the time, understanding its importance, and speaking a different language in the home. That is the reality…

Providing middle-grades students the opportunity to engage meaningfully with controversial public issues (CPIs), socioscientific issues (SSIs), or a framework for social justice can be very dangerous work professionally. However, rather than encouraging teacher candidates to eschew controversy, ensuring they receive sufficient training in how to…

"Learning to Teach in a New Era" prepares preservice teachers to embrace the opportunities and meet the challenges of teaching in the twenty-first century. Closely aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) and the Australian Curriculum, this book is an invaluable resource for early childhood, primary and…

The University of Helsinki established a Teachers' Academy to reward excellence in teaching. This study focuses on teachers' significant networks and their meaningful conversations about teaching and learning before the establishment of the Teachers' Academy. The research data consisted of answers to open-ended questions, and were examined using…

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine prospective teachers' mathematics teaching efficacy belief during their enrollment in teacher education program and at the end of their first year of teaching. In addition, the factors that enhance or inhibit participants' efficacy belief and how these factors affect their mathematics teaching…

A serious gap exists within special education preparation programs; many neglect to adequately prepare teacher candidates to engage with parents of children with disabilities to create effective family-school-community collaboration. The following article describes the impact on the practices and dispositions of teacher candidates resulting from…

The aim of this study was to help pre-service teachers develop basic knowledge and skill for partnering with families on assessment-related issues. An assessment class for teacher educators (experimental group) participated in role-playing activities designed to expand their understanding and skill in a way that would help them learn how to…

Parents can positively impact children's learning of mathematics. To productively engage families in the learning process, teachers must support such interpersonal relationships. The author describes the investigative work of a group of teacher candidates as they sought to attain such understanding. Eighteen preservice teachers, who were…

This study examines preservice and in-service teachers' perspectives on their preparation in learning parental involvement strategies and explores their opinions on what kind of experiences regarding parental involvement they think teacher education programs should provide. The data from the study suggested that the preservice teachers held…

Based on continuing research in Theatre as Representation (TAR), this paper examines and explores an application of a TAR based dramatic scenario that expands each participant's creative awareness of both content and participation in an administration of inclusive schools graduate Master of Education (M.Ed.) course.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine early childhood pre-service teachers' concerns and solutions. One hundred early childhood pre-service teachers who were enrolled at Pamukkale University, Turkey, answered two open-ended questions by e-mail. In addition, six of these participants were interviewed for developing a deeper…

Systemically trained counselors have a distinctive set of skills that make them well suited to prepare teachers to work with students' families. In this article, we discuss our experiences as family counselors in developing and teaching a required course in family-school collaboration to elementary teachers in training. We first describe the…

Parent empowerment includes the ability to meet the needs of one's family while feeling in control. This phenomenological study seeks to understand the experience of 71 parents of children with disabilities who participated with pre-service teachers in a 16-week special education course between 2006 and 2010. Analysis of pre-course and post-course…

The author describes her two-year experience of living in China and how this molded her attitudes about English language learners in Texas. Examples drawn from the Nanjing International School show how one school worked to meet the needs of a diverse group of students, with more than 70% learning English as a second language. The practical…

This article describes the Parent Teacher Education Curriculum, a Web-based curriculum focused on instructing teachers about best practices in family involvement and assesses its impact on the knowledge and attitudes of preservice teachers related to family involvement. Pre- and post-measures of preservice teacher candidate knowledge of and…